Too many cons? Put 'em on an electronic leash

I’ve been on a reading binge lately, devouring true crime books at the gym as I cycle away the results of a healthy appetite. And the more of these books I read, the angrier I get at Gov. Jerry Brown and his legislative shills.

It seems that when they’re not trying to figure out ways to increase taxes to feed their union benefactors they are toying with budget cuts that go directly against what’s supposed to be the No. 1 goal of government: to keep us safe.

The state’s prison realignment program is a disaster that’s no longer waiting to happen. It is happening. Brown and his legislative henchmen effectively have washed their hands of dangerous criminals and are leaving it up to already-overburdened county governments to rise up to meet the challenge -- which, of course, they’re in no position to do.

Here in Riverside County, the five county jails were at 80 percent capacity when the program was launched in October 2011. Within three months, all 3,906 jail beds were filled. Since then, the Sheriff’s Department has had no other choice but to release nearly 7,000 prisoners to make room for newly sentenced criminals who in the past would have gone to state prison, but now are being sent to the county jail, as long as their latest offense is considered “non-violent.”

To his credit, Sheriff Stan Sniff is making the best of a bad situation. He’s proposing to offset the growing number of inmate releases by sending some of them home wearing electronic ankle bracelets while they wait for court appointments, so at the very least we know where they are.

Up to now, more than 2,000 of the inmates tapped for release from jail because there wasn’t any room had been arraigned on other charges and were waiting for their day in court. As long as they made bail, they were released without any supervision or monitoring at all.

Under Sniff’s proposal, inmates who are being held in lieu of bail would be sent home, but on what effectively amounts to an electronic leash.

The end result: more dangerous cons under the watchful eye of the law.

Sniff’s proposal, which Riverside County supervisors approved last week, is far from perfect, but it’s certainly better than doing nothing.

As Supervisor Jeff Stone told this newspaper, it’s a “short-term fix to a long-term problem.”

The best solution, of course, would be to build more jails -- actually that’s No. 2, the ideal solution would to be elect a new governor who understands public safety and would undo the folly perpetrated against us by Brown.

But a $237 million expansion project at the county’s Indio jail, which would give us 1,250 more jail beds won’t be completed until 2016, and by then who knows how many more crooks our county will need to contend with, particularly under the worst-case scenario of Brown or another soft-on-crime Democrat still occupying the state house.

So to the sheriff and our local supes, good going. By all means, short-term fix away ...